Affiliation Networks

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Affiliation Networks

• Jody Schmid and Anna Ryan
• 10/25/07

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The Structure of Class Cohesion The Corporate
Network and Its DualBearden and Mintz

• The study of cohesion in advanced capitalist
  societies applies structural analysis to the
  business community in two ways
• Interlocking directorates uses the corporation
  as the unit of analysis and structural analyses
  (in this case intercorporate relations) to
  identify mechanisms of cohesion within the
  business community. Example Bank boards are
  the primary location for collective
  decision-making within the corporate world
• Capitalist class concentrates on the role of
  individuals in unity formation by identifying
  sources of cohesion (attributes of individuals)
  within the capitalist class, such as shared
  background, friendship networks, and membership
  on policy planning bodies. Example those who
  sit on the boards of directors of two or more
  major corporations are more likely to belong to
  exclusive social clubs and to share the
  friendship networks and social class backgrounds
  attributed to members of the upper class.

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• Authors argue that the results of studies of
  corporate and capitalist behavior are compelling.
  While recent studies suggest these systems are
  mutually interacting, the details of the
  relationship are not developed.
• For example, under what circumstances is
  institutional position more important than class
  position, and vice versa, and what are the
  different role structures for each? Moreover,
  which is determining -- corporate organization or
  class organization?
• The authors believe that the use of structural
  analysis is the best way to answer these
  questions. This study uses a network analysis of
  the relations among corporate directors to
  identify sources of cohesion within the
  capitalist class.

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Data

• Collected as part of a joint project of the
  Research Group on Intercorporate Structure of the
  European Consortium for Political Research for
  the year 1976 on the 200 largest non-financial
  firms (defined by sales) and the 50 largest
  financial institutions (defined by assets) in the
  United States.
• Two of the firms were subsidiaries of other
  companies in the sample. They kept those two
  firms, but added two additional. As a result,
  N252.

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Findings

• There are two routs to participation in the
  organization of relations at the highest levels
  of American capitalism
• Leadership of one of the largest corporations in
  the business world.
• Social elite credentials combined with leadership
  of a somewhat smaller firm.
• There is a regional as well as a national element
  to the structure. Both are important as sources
  of unification, but the national element is more
  class-based. As a result, the national component
  unites class and institutional interests more
  than the regional component.

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Conclusion

• Due to the class base of the socially elite
  directors and the institutional histories
  represented by executives, those representing
  class and institutional interests hold the
  interlocking network together.
• The ties maintained by directors of the largest
  companies produce a structure of relations
  through which class and institutional interests
  met. The overlap most often occurs in bank
  boards.

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The Organizational State Introductory
OverviewLaumann and Knoke

• The book describes, compares and contrasts the
  national policy domains of energy and health
• As they emerged in the 1970s in the U.S.
• As products of their distinctive histories of
  institutional and organizational development.

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Conclusion

• State policymaking is the product of the complex
  interactions between government and
  nongovernmental organizations, both seeking
  influence over collectively binding decisions.

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• Important features of state policymaking include
  the
• Centrality of large formal organizations
• Significance of policy interests in narrowly
  focused events
• Great value of timely and trustworthy
  information
• Activation of policy participants through
  communication networks and
• Use of communication networks to mobilize
  influence on formal authorities.

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Other State Policy-making Approaches

• Marxist-inspired analyses of the economic-class
  basis of the modern state
• Elites with organizational interests
• Interest group pluralism
• Corporatism

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Marxist-inspired analyses of the economic-class
basis of the modern state

• Instrumentalist
• Structuralist
• Laumann and Knoke criticism these analyses do
  not track state policy making at the
  organizational level. The authors believe
  policies result from the conflict and
  contradictions among these organizational players
  rather than the interests of a monolithic class.

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Elites With Organizational Intersts

• This approach conceives of the state in terms of
  elites whose interests are more organizationally
  derived than class-oriented.
• It often uses the individual as the unit of
  analysis, tracing career and recruitment patterns
  of top career posts, but looks at networks among
  core actors (interlocking directorates).
• Laumann and Knoke criticism They believe that
  organizations, rather than natural persons, are
  the core actors at the national level. By
  studying organizations, they hope to reveal the
  underlying social structure and dynamics of state
  policymaking.

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Interest Group Pluralism

• Interest group pluralism focuses on organized
  interests and their relations with the state.
• Laumann and Knoke criticism Much of this
  literature is descriptive in nature and the
  theoretical explanations focus on the more
  formalized aspects of legislation. They seek to
  develop a more sociologically informed approach
  to interest group behavior which stresses the
  centrality of network structures among organized
  interest groups as the means of transmitting
  timely and trustworthy information needed to
  mobilize resources, build coalitions and engage
  in the bargaining and negotiating that ultimately
  results in state policies.

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Corporatism

• Corporatism focuses on organized interests and
  their relations with the state.
• Although most scholars agree that the U.S. lacks
  corporatist attributes, the identification of
  autonomous organizations as key state actors and
  the view that state policies can be seen as a
  series of negotiations among these actors is
  compatible with their perspective.

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Structural Relations

• Social structure refers to those stable,
  recurrent patterns of relationships that link
  consequential actors to each other and to the
  larger social system.
• It may be conceptualized in terms of the
  multiple types of ties among system members, the
  patterning of whichmay be used to identify a
  subsystems fundamental social positions and the
  roles performed by particular organizations.

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Structural Relations

• The two most prevalent techniques for identifying
  social positions are structural equivalence and
  subgroup cohesion.
• Structurally equivalent actors have similar
  patterns of ties with other system actors,
  regardless of their direct ties with each other.
  
• Subgroup cohesion aggregates only those actors
  who maintain dense mutual interactions either as
  cliques or social circles (highly overlapping
  cliques).

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Three relationships are important in identifying
social structures

• Information transmission
• Resource transaction
• Boundary penetration

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The Policy Process

• Smelsers (1962) model of social change
• Problem perception
• Domain actors propose alternative interpretations
  of the problem
• Domain actors communicate their preferred
  responses
• Domain actors or coalitions of actors attempt to
  get authorities to place the issue on the agenda
• Once the issue reaches the agenda, domain actors
  mobilize in an effort to influence the outcome
• The policy cycle is closed once authorities
  select one option to deal with the problem
• If implementation fails, the cycle may commence
  again

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Theoretical Background

• The authors argue that sociologists have focused
  almost exclusively on actors, relationships among
  actors, and relations among institutions in which
  actors are embedded, often neglecting the
  characteristics of the event(s) in which the
  actors are active.

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The arrows depict the direction of the move from
one phenomenal unit to another, while the figure
suggest whether one has stayed at the same level
of analysis or shifted levels. Typically studies
start from actors and move to events. One could
also emphasize how events (candidates attributes)
act as a demand structure for actors behavior
(voting).
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Structuration of Action Systems
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Framing Perspective in Cell a
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• Laumann and Knoke argue that events themselves
  possess properties in the absolute sense of
  individually characterized occasions or as
  organized contextually that has consequences for
  the way actors behave.
• The organized contextually of an event is based
  both on its horizontal context (i.e., the
  embeddedness in institutional space) and its
  longitudinal context (i.e., embeddedness in
  time).
• The interconnection of events has methodological
  implications for the framing of the data analysis
  and interpretations of the results.

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Empirical Application

• Their model resulted from the problem of
  identifying the set of events around which the
  actors activities were organized once they
  resolved the issue of boundary-specification in
  terms of identifying the set of consequential
  corporate actors in energy and health policy over
  a period of 5-to-10 years.
• They define an event as a critical, temporally
  ordered decision point in a collective
  decision-making sequence that must occur in order
  for a policy option to be authoritatively
  selected.
• There are two analytically separable dimensions
  the institutional decision location and
  historical time forming the basis for developing
  linkages among events.

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• To understand how national policy unfolds, it is
  necessary to take into account how organizations
  respond to an opportunity structure for affecting
  policy outcomes that is created by the temporal
  sequence of policy relevant events.
• What is permissible in one institutional arena
  may not be normatively approved in another.
  Different institutional arenas attract different
  actors. Moreover, the coupling of events may
  rest on an institutionally prescribed order.

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• It is also necessary to take time into account.
  Events do not occur in isolation, they are
  embedded in temporally ordered sequences that
  shape the policy responses of core actors.
• Two or more events may constitute distinct
  intermediate points in a chain of related
  decisions leading to an outcome. The fact that
  one event follows another establishes an
  incontrovertible and irreversible relationship
  among them.

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• History is important. It distinguishes earlier
  and later events.
• The closer the events in time, the higher the
  probability that similar actors will be
  attracted.
• The decision to participate in the first event
  would be facilitated if it occurs at a time when
  there is a low volume of competing activities in
  the policy domain. Patterns of participation in
  initiatory events should differ from those in
  intermediate or late events in the sequence.

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The Model